On the question of dumbing down the arts, one entry sticks out in my mind- Ballet of the Speedway. Roanoke Ballet Theatre presented NASCAR Ballet five years ago. I had a number of conversation with arts managers over this–whether it is pandering or a frank acknowledgment that the arts must serve their community. I am still not sure I have a definitive sense of where I stand on this.
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Still Wondering How We Got Into This Mess
One entry I have consistently linked back to over the past 5 years is a summary I did of John Kreidler’s “Leverage Lost: The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era.” Kreidler’s piece provides a great history of how the example of the Ford Foundation shaped the way the current model of funding of non-profits emerged.
Read my reflections in How Did We Get Into This Mess and maybe you will want to take the time to read Kreidler’s longer piece.
Keeping The Passion Alive While I am Away
Because the conversation on my last entry has been so active, I have been reluctant to make any more entries and remove it from the top of the page. The fact that I was making entry sized responses contributed to the lack of additional material as well.
Now that things have calmed down, I am on vacation and don’t have time to write much. I don’t want things to settle too much in my absence so I am providing a link to some of my “best of” entries. The first, appropriately enough entitled “Rousing Passion.”
Neill Archer Roan gave a speech, unfortunately no longer available on line, where he talked about his experiences presenting Bach’s St. John’s Passion and the complications surrounding the work’s perceived anti-Semitism.
There is a lot to think about.
Enjoy!
http://www.insidethearts.com/buttsintheseats/2005/04/19/rousing-passion/
Waxing Philosophical With Donald Duck
Apparently Donald Duck is to German philosophy and culture what Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes was to classical music. According to a Wall Street Journal piece, Donald Duck comic sell close to 250,000 copies a week in Germany. A monthly Donald Duck special sells 40,000 copies primarily to adults. Where Carl Stalling injected classical music into Bugs Bunny cartoons, Erika Fuchs spent over 50 years injecting German literature and philosophy into her German translations of the Disney icon. (my emphasis)
Dr. Fuchs’s Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”
One of my first blog entries was about using comic books to promote the value of the arts. I am thinking that may still be a good idea given the influence Fuchs and Stallings works have had in making great works familiar and accessible to audiences. Americans for the Arts seems to have already picked up on that. Their last round of “Arts, Ask for More” television commercials featured characters from Disney’s Little Eisensteins.
Some of my earliest introductions to classics of literature were Classics Illustrated. I also remember reading religious comic books about Bible stories and Johnny Cash’s fall and return from grace. While waiting for the bus in a library during the winter, I read up on the life of Crispus Attucks and Harriet Tubman. I am sure interest and understanding could be generated in Shakespeare, Moliere, Bach, Mozart, Ansel Adams and Dada if someone did a good job of it.
Anyone with a visual arts background want to apply for an NEA grant? (Of course, nice cartoon videos to post on YouTube might be cool so actors and musicians are needed, too!)